Out of the Solukhumbu

As the old saying goes: A little knowledge can be a terrible thing.

Before I arrived in Nepal, I'd picked up a few statistics here and there. Assembled through a myriad of sources -- the Lonely Planet, the Himalayan Rescue Association and various Nepal websites -- these were the numbers that wormed themselves into my head:

• 1 in 6,500 trekkers will die in Nepal.
• Every year, 3 trekkers will die of acute mountain sickness (AMS).
• 40% of trekkers climbing up the Solukhumbu will develop moderate AMS symptoms.

These are not exactly confidence-inspiring factoids.

But, since I'm posting this; I obviously didn't fall off a cliff, get crushed by an avalanche, or get pushed off a mountain by an angry yak. I developed mild AMS symptoms for about a half a day before I quashed things by self-medicating with Diamox. I did not have to make the decision to turn around. I made it to Everest Base Camp and back.

After a brief sojourn out to Pokhara, I'm back in Kathmandu for four nights before returning to Hong Kong.

I have a tonne of material to work on from my last three weeks in Nepal (including over 2,500 exposures from the Himalaya region alone), but that will come later. For now, this is just a short note to let blog readers know that I'm still alive and should be back to regularly scheduled programming soon.  Maybe sooner rather than later if I can just figure out the timing of these freaking twelve- to sixteen-hour load-shedding blackouts.